Collective Action and Psychological Change

Collective Action and Psychological Change:

The emergence of new social identities

John Drury

School of Social Sciences, University of Sussex

Steve Reicher

School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews

Running head: Emergence of an oppositional self-definition

Address for correspondence: John Drury, c/o Social Psychology Office, School of Social Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QN, UK.

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Collective Action and Psychological Change:

The emergence of new social identities

Abstract

The study described in this paper is used to develop an elaborated social identity model of crowd behaviour (Reicher, 1996, 1997a,b; Stott, 1996). This model seeks to explain not only the determination of collective action by social identity but also the processes by which social identity changes as a result of crowd action. It is argued that, in order to account for the phenomena of social determination and social change it is necessary to analyse crowd events as developing interactions between groups. Where crowd members hold a different understanding of their social position to that held by an outgroup (e.g. the police) and where the outgroup has the power to treat crowd members in terms of its understandings, then crowd members who act on the basis of one understanding of their social relations find themselves in an unexpected and novel set of social relations. This then provides the basis for a change in their self-understanding. The model is substantiated through a participant observation study of an attempt by roads protestors to prevent the demolition of trees on the proposed site of a new motorway in North London. Contemporaneous evidence taken from protestors before, during and after the event provides evidence of a radicalized self concept and indicates a link between the radicalization, the assymetry of categorical representations between protestors and the police and the subsequent interaction premised on these divergent representations.

Introduction

Across different disciplines, there is by now considerable evidence concerning the psychological changes found to take place among participants in crowd and social movement events. In relation to historiography, for example, Thompson (1991, p. 125), describes how a private act of enclosure in 1791 precipitated ‘spectacular riots, which may have influenced the citizens to turn in a Paineite or “Jacobin” direction.’ Sociological studies of the waves of collective action in the USA in the 1960s note the enduring ‘radicalization’ among activists (e.g., McAdam, 1989). Research on strikes across different times and cultures points to the development among participants of a more critical attitude towards those in power and a more class-collective self-conception (e.g., Fantasia, 1988; Green, 1990; Lane & Roberts, 1971; Mann, 1973). Accounts of revolutionary mass movements also note such changes among participants. For example, the struggles in Hungary 1956 and France 1968 were associated with both enhanced self-confidence and new conceptions of possible societies (Anderson, 1964; Gregoire & Perlman, 1969). Even within psychology, which on the whole has concentrated more on the antecedents than the consequences of collective action (Abrams, 1993; Crosby, 1976; Kelly & Breinlinger, 1995; Walker & Pettigrew, 1984), it has been observed that participation may change the nature of participants. Milgram & Toch (1969), for instance, note how that involved in the Watts riot became both committed to and proud of their identity as black people.

If the phenomenon of change is well established, it still remains largely in want of an explanation. This is not to say that the issue of explanation has been entirely ignored or that the field is entirely lacking in valuable insights. Thus, case study analyses of collective events characteristically point to the importance of conflictual interaction (particularly conflict between protest groups and those representing the forces of authority) to be particularly important in bringing about change (e.g., Adams, 1994; Anderson, 1964; Fantasia, 1988; Green, 1990) - although scant attention is paid to the way in which such intergroup dynamics could bring about such psychological consequences for members of the different groups . Conversely, a recent wave of sociological social movement theories, unified by the rubric ‘social constructionist’, promises an account of psychological issues such as changes in identity through collective action (e.g., Eyerman & Jamison, 1991; McAdam, 1982; Melucci, 1989, 1995). However, these theories tend to ignore the intergroup dynamics within which change occurs and focus exclusively on intragroup processes. More particularly, they refer to the role of ‘discussion and argument’ in bringing about change (e.g., Klandermans, 1992b; Hirsh, 1990). This leaves a somewhat unsatisfactory choice. Either intergroup dynamics are stressed to the exclusion of intragroup dynamics or the opposite is true. To put it slightly differently, it may certainly be true that psychological change is dependent upon argument and discussion, but this does not in itself get us very far unless one understands why particular arguments or speakers will be influential, or why they might have an impact at particular times and not others. Such an understanding depends at the very least upon integrating inter- and intra-group levels of analysis.

If the position outside psychology is unsatisfactory, the position inside is even worse. While historians and sociologists at least aspire to explain the phenomena of change, the classic psychological approaches to mass social behaviour exclude change even as a possibility. Whether in the irrationalist guise typified by Le Bon (1896/1947) or in the individualist guise originating from the work of Allport (1924), these approaches erect a Chinese wall between the individual and the social world (cf. McPhail, 1991; Reicher, Spears & Postmes, 1995). As a consequence, they can account neither for the way in which social factors impact upon crowd behaviour (Gilmour, 1992; Milgram & Toch, 1969; Rudé, 1981; Reicher, 1984, 1987) nor for the way in which crowd behaviour impacts upon society (Ackerman & Kruegler, 1994; Mayer, 1995). In other words they ignore both social determination and social change. Equally, if the individual is treated as a given which is either occluded (Le Bon) or exemplified (Allport) in the crowd, then it becomes impossible to explain how participants may be changed through their experience of collective action.

Such difficulties are not limited to theories which divorce self from society. The social identity approach to crowd behaviour (Reicher, 1984, 1987) was explicitly formulated to overcome this separation. Indeed, the very concept of social identity is formulated as something which is both profoundly personal (it says who the individual is) and social (both in the micro-social sense of being specified in relation to other contextually relevant categories and in the macro-social sense of being defined through culturally derived meanings). Thus crowd members, by virtue of acting in terms of a shared social identity, act together on the basis of a shared cultural understanding both of themselves and of their world. However, despite caveats to the contrary, the empirical studies tended to treat social identity as a predefined construct which guided collective action. Without specifying the nature of identity and the nature of crowd action in such a way that the one may be redefined by the other, there is a danger that - by default if not by intent - the social identity model of crowds would account for social determination only at the cost of excluding social and psychological change.

Recently, attempts have been made to elaborate the model in order to address precisely this point (Drury, 1996; Reicher, 1996, 1997a,b; Stott, 1996; Stott & Reicher, in press). These elaborations retain the core notion that individuals in crowds do not lose their identity but rather shift from behaving in terms of disparate individual identities to behaving in terms of a contextually specified common social identity - and hence, rather than losing control over their behaviour, crowd members judge and act by reference to the understandings which define the relevant social identification. However, they also stress that crowd events are characteristically intergroup encounters and that it is necessary to examine how identity may develop as a function of intergroup dynamics. In a predominantly speculative piece, Reicher (1997) suggests that such a dynamic approach requires reconsideration of three conceptual areas which are central to both the model of crowd behaviour and to the social identity tradition more generally.

First of all, the concept of social identity itself is addressed, and the idea that it should be treated as a list of attributes or else a collection of traits is discarded in favour of a definition that brings the conception of identity content in line with that of identity process. Just as self-categorisation theory proposes that group salience and group prototypes are determined as a function of the relations of similarity and difference between the contextually available categories (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher & Wetherell, 1987; Turner, Oakes, Haslam & McGarty, 1994), so it is suggested that social identity be regarded as a model of ones position in a set of social relations along with the actions that are possible and proper given such a position.

Secondly, the notion of ‘context’ comes under scrutiny. Rather than context being seen as something external to and determining of identity and action, it is pointed out that the context in which any one group acts is constituted partially if not wholly by other groups. That is, crowd events are characteristically intergroup encounters. The understandings and actions of one group (say, the sense of the police that the crowd as a whole is dangerous and hence the decision to deploy riot shields) form the material reality which the other group faces and which frames their own understandings and actions - which then in turn form the context for the first group. Thus the relationship between categorisation and context is not between two different orders of phenomena. Rather it is the historically developing interaction between different collective subjects and must be analysed as such.

Thirdly, the relationship between identity, intention and consequence is explicitly addressed. Within the social identity tradition little is said on this issue and it is seemingly implied that identity processes create intentions that are automatically instantiated. By analysing crowd events in terms of intergroup interactions this unbroken chain becomes disrupted. Whatever the intentions of one group, their acts may be reinterpreted by the other group who then react in unanticipated ways and create new contexts within which the original group subsequently exists. Acts may be intentional, but in a differentiated social world, intentions are not always realised. Acts often have unintended consequences.

If social identity is treated as a model of social relations, then the question of how one may change social identity by acting upon it resolves to the question of how ones model of social relations becomes modified by acting in terms of that model. This is possible given the interactive nature of crowd events. In particular, crowd members act in terms of a particular understanding of their own social position, but such action may lead others to have a different understanding of that position. To the extent that these others are in a position to act in such a way as to impose a new context based on their understanding upon the crowd, then crowd action on the basis of one understanding of social relations may, through the mediation of the other, produce a new social realities and new understandings.

Reicher (1996) provides some support for the general approach through an analysis of the development of conflict in a student demonstration. Most students participated in the demonstration on the basis of a collective self understanding as respectable subjects exercising the democratic right to protest (and hence distanced themselves from radicals calling for confrontational action). The police, however, saw the student body as a whole as a dangerous threat and acted in order to impede their progress towards the Houses of Parliament. This action was seen as illegitimate by students as a whole. It thereby unified them in opposition to the police and, what is more, such unity empowered them to actively confront the police cordon.

The study therefore shows how conflict cannot simply be understood in terms of conflictual norms within student identity, but must take account of the developing relationship between students and the police. However, while illustrating the need for an interactive approach to crowd action, and while showing that developments within crowd events occur through such interaction, the paper does not explicitly focus on processes of change per se - especially not on enduring psychological changes resulting from participation in events. Indeed, the nature of the data does not allow an investigation of these processes. While many participants do claim that they experienced disturbing shifts in their self-understanding - from citizens within a neutral state to radicals in opposition to a biased state - the data is almost entirely post hoc. What is more, there is no attempt to address particular elements that are integral to the model of change, such as the relationship between intentionality and action. Thus, the elaborated social identity approach to crowd behaviour remains a model in want of evidence. This study is aimed at satisfying that want.

The study is specifically concerned with the issue of identity change - where by change we mean endorsing a self-conception that had not been previously adopted or was even explicitly rejected (rather than variability which we see as contextually determined differences amongst an existing repertoire of identities). More specifically, we wish to examine how the self-categorisations of crowd members change as a function of their interactions with an outgroup. In line with the model outlined above, we hypothesise, firstly, that change will only occur to the extent that there are asymmetries between actors’ own conceptions of who they are and what they have a right to do, and the conceptions of others concerning who they are and what they can be allowed to do. Secondly, change will be dependent upon the ability of the outgroup to enact its own understandings and hence place crowd members within a novel and unanticipated set of social relations. Thirdly, the nature of change will be a matter of actors’ reconceptualising their social position to fit with the new social relations in which they are placed by outgroup actions.

In addition to being distinctive in terms of its specific theoretical focus upon collective action and identity change, this study is also distinctive in terms of its methodology. Prior studies in the social identity tradition - the social identity model of crowds in particular - have been largely retrospective. As we indicated, previous indications of identity change (e.g. Reicher, 1996) were derived from post-hoc comments. These are open to obvious objections. In order to grasp the process and the type of psychological change in collective action it is necessary to obtain a greater proportion of fine-grained and contemporaneous data (cf. Benford & Hunt, 1995; Breakwell, 1992; Condor, 1994; Klandermans, 1992a). The study described here aims to analyse measures of self-definition among crowd participants taken at different times over the duration of a crowd event and in the context of their developing interactions with an outgroup.

Methodology

Choice of Event and Data Gathering Strategy

The analysis provided here is part of a larger study into various forms of psychological change amongst protestors in a campaign against the building of the M11 link road in north-east London. This was one of the largest and longest lasting campaigns of direct action in Britain. Over the period from September 1993 to the final eviction of protestors from houses on the path of the planned motorway in December 1994, campaign actions became national front page news several times. The specific event dealt with here - the eviction of people occupying a chestnut tree in a green on the M11 route (subsequently referred to in the campaign as ‘Blue Tuesday’) - was one such occasion.

Given the nature of the phenomena being studied and the desire to collect contemporaneous (rather than post-hoc) information, participant observation was chosen as the most appropriate approach to data gathering. On the one hand, given the need for protestors and the police to keep their actions secret from each other, events were necessarily unpredictable to outsiders. Only by actual participation would it be possible to be present and hence collect contemporaneous data during these events. On the other hand, the fact that participants were actively involved in what were frequently conflictual incidents made it impractical to ask them to record data themselves over the duration of the event. A participant analyst would, however, be able to do so. Participant observation is supremely opportunistic, being flexibly adaptive to possible changes in its research topic and setting, open to the unexpected and allowing the gathering of a wide variety of data (Burgess, 1982; Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983; Green, 1993; Whyte, 1984). In this specific case, opportunism was also the order of the day, particularly in terms of collecting a variety of forms of data which, using triangulation, could allow cross validation (cf. Denzin, 1989). A full list of the data sources is given in Appendix 1

Analytic approach

In general terms, the analytic approach adopted here was similar to that used in other studies of the social identity model of crowds (e.g. Reicher, 1984; Reicher, 1996; Stott & Reicher, in press). First of all, a consensual account of the event was constructed on the basis of materials deriving from a number of different parties to the event (demonstrators, police and press). Elements are treated as consensual, and hence included in the account, to the extent that there is agreement between the different parties (campaign participants on the one hand and police or press on the other) or between statements by any one of these parties on the one hand and photographs, audio recordings or videos on the other. At points at which only campaign participants themselves were present, agreement between different campaign participant accounts is considered as consensual. Finally, where accounts diverge or only one source makes a claim in relation to an event involving both campaign participants and others, the origin of the claim is given in brackets. As with any description of an event, we accept that our account is constructed rather than absolute. Nonetheless, insofar as it is consensual, it represents reality as understood by the various parties of participants and to which they jointly orientate. Hence, as well as providing a guide to the reader, this account serves to identifies the features of the action and interaction which will be the focus of explanation.